iSuppli claims PS4 cost $381

Research firm IHS iSuppli has pulled apart the PS4 and come to the conclusion that it cost Sony roughly $381 to make. The most expensive parts are the console's AMD-designed APU ($100) and its 8GB of GDDR5 RAM which was $88.

The chip measures about 348mm2, owing to the eight CPU cores and dedicated-class GPU that's integrated into its die. The larger your chip is, the greater the chance that some part of it will have a defect on it somewhere, which drives yields down and pushes costs up, ISuppli said.

Other notable costs include the 500GB hard drive (about $37), the Blu-ray drive ($28), and the controller ($18). Not factored into the teardown cost are research and development, advertising, and shipping costs associated with the console. This cost should be enough to kill off any margin that Sony had on the product.

It is much cheaper than the original PS3 which which sold for a higher $599 but cost an estimated $805 to build because of then-new, expensive components like its custom Cell processor and Blu-ray drive.